Job Description and its Analysis

A person who can run fast might not be the best person to swim fast and so is a great swimmer need not necessarily be a fine singer. As a recruiter, it is important for you to find the right match for the job you are hiring for. And that’s when a job description, the very first stage of a recruitment process, becomes important for you. If you choose a career in recruiting, vetting a job description might be one of the most crucial tasks you will need to perform.

Importance of Job Description

A job description might be a 3-page document. But your eagle eyes should be able to pick the most important responsibilities from it. This document will include the scope of work, qualification, experience, duties, and compensation. All this information helps you create an outline of the person you would hunt for.

As much as the job description is important for a recruiter, it is important for the candidate as well. It helps the candidate understand the skills and knowledge required to perform the tasks. A piece of complete information encourages the candidate to pursue further with the job.

Sample Job Description

Following is a sample of a typical job description. It may vary from company to company but the overall content should be similar.

Job Title

Senior Technical Recruiter

Experience

3yrs to 5yrs

Education

Graduate with Business Degree

Work Location

Pune, India

Shift

Eastern Time

Roles and Responsibilities

Responsible for sourcing candidates through job portals and other mediums including professional networking sites.

A job description could be as simple as what has outlined above. However, many times the company releases a standard version of the job description. A standard version is going to have a lot of information that might be of no use to you. And hence your analysis on the job description becomes important. You need to ensure that you pick the important information for you and for the candidate from what you have.

How to analyze a job description – Recruiters

List down the benefits for the candidates if they decide to pick the job. You need to understand that you are selling a job to your talent pool. And when you are selling, you better be aware of all the benefits of the opportunity.

And it’s not just knowing the benefits. You must also do a competition analysis. Find out what other similar size companies are offering on the role you are currently hiring. This awareness goes a long way. You would know where to look for your prospects.

You might also like to know the top selling skills and like to create a passive pool for the future. Learn more about the Top 10 highest paying jobs of the future and prepare your pool of candidates now.

Good to have VS. Must have skills

As a rule, you must divide your requirements into good to have and must to have criteria. A job description is going to talk about the most ideal candidate you should hunt for. But the ideal world hardly exists. Find out the exceptions to what is mentioned in the job description.

In the sample job description, the education required is a graduate with a business degree. However, this might just be a desirable qualification. A simple graduate with excellent communication skills might also fit into the role. A recruiter needs to have good communication and selling skills. A graduate degree might just good to have a requirement. When you have divided the skills in good to have and must to have, it will be easier for you to find the right fit.

How to analyze a job description – Candidates

Searching for a job is a time consuming and grueling task. From thousands of jobs on job boards, it’s possible ending up wasting a lot of time with wrong opportunities.

The goal here is to only find the opportunities those are worth your time and effort. A few tips, if you keep in mind, will help you achieve this.

Job Titles: Never apply to jobs by just looking at their job titles. Job titles could be deceiving. A manager without management responsibilities is as good as an individual contributor. Always look for roles and responsibilities first.

Good to have vs. must have skills: Find out the most important skills required to get the job done. Do you have them? If yes, then spend more time in analyzing the requirement. If you are 80% match to it, the opportunity is worth your time. Otherwise, move on to the next opportunity.

Unrealistic requirement: A job description that has a long list of must to have a requirement is a red flag. This is a clear indication that the hiring manager is not clear about what they want. You might just end up wasting your time with no results at all with such opportunities.

Beyond Job Description

Some research on sites like Glassdoor will be helpful in your decision making. Take your research to the next step by connecting with a few employees in the organization. Professional networking sites like LinkedIn are great to seek guidance.

Coming back to the recruiter, a deep analysis of job description prepares you well. When a candidate asks about the suitability of the job, you are better prepared to answer back.

As a recruiter, you will need to re-write the job description to make it candidate friendly. Carole Martin has written a beautiful book on the perfect phrases for writing job descriptions. I recommend reading it to better yourself in exciting your candidates with the job descriptions you send to them.

After working with more a few hundred recruiters I realized that only a very few choose to recruit as their career. Rest of the others just happened to be in this business and gradually become recruiter. They never believed recruiting to be a serious career and hence no formal training. Most of the recruiters fail miserably because of lack of knowledge to perform their duties. But because the demand is so very high, employers settle down with low performance and the poor performance feels a win. My goal is to help people understand the core values of recruiting, help them gain the required knowledge to fast track their career and take the most out of one of the best rewarding career in the world.